As legalization sweeps the country, weed is becoming more acceptable as a common, casual substance. Smoking weed after work is basically the new version of having a glass of wine. But surely there are some potential downsides to weed, and one AskReddit thread had people chatting all about it. Here are 15 downsides of weed that people don’t talk about, courtesy of Redditors.
1. Lack of appetite.
“Not having an appetite if you’re not high. You have to smoke heavily though to get to that point.”
2. All thought, no action.
“Been smoking everyday for the past decade and am recently realizing that being too introspective can be a negative thing at times – I’ve been thinking too much and acting too little.”
3. Cognitive issues.
“Both my roommates are heavy smokers, and they just… think so slowly. It takes them forever to understand anything. They also forget a lot of stuff, like they’ll step away from the dishes for a moment and then never finish them without prompting.”
4. A one-track mind.
“It can become your only personality trait.”
“Some of my peers’ only goal is when they are going to get their next high and like they are so stuck in the culture that they just become sort of boring and their personality lacks dimension.”
“I lost a significant chunk of my best friends in college because by senior year all they were focused on was weed.”
5. Loss of motivation.
“It is fine in moderation, but multiple times per day seems to suck the ambition from most people I’ve seen, including myself long ago.”
“I used to smoke every day multiple times a day and I can confirm: it made me useless and killed my motivation. It also contributed to me losing my job.”
“It makes you okay with being just okay.”
6. Anxiety or panic.
“Things that aren’t currently stressing you out may start to induce anxiety in you. While this isn’t always the case, weed has the potential to worsen your mental state if you aren’t careful. This impact became more pronounced when I smoked weed solo, having other people around allowed me to be more present in the moment, whereas I was in my head when I was alone.”
7. Poor conversational skills.
“I’ve noticed after the initial uptick in chatter- people tend to get really quiet, and zoned out in their own thoughts.
When I used to smoke it, I found it had a dulling effect on my personality and conversational skills after the fact, too.”
“Yeah I’d never tell any of my sweet lovely friends this in real life in case it hurt their feelings, but a couple of them are a lot less fun after they smoke weed.”
8. No more dreams at night.
“One thing that I never see brought up is the effect of marijuana on dreaming. Marijuana use can prevent the user from dreaming during regular sleep. When the user stops using Marijuana for a while, they can experience night after night of extremely vivid dreams. I can only speak for my own experience, but I have heard this echoed by a co-worker’s dad who started smoking again because he couldn’t handle “having acid-trip dreams every night”.
I suspect that marijuana has some potent effect on REM sleep that will remain under-documented until it is de-scheduled and more thorough research can be done.”
9. Vomiting.
“Cannabinoid hyperemesis and cyclic vomiting syndrome.”
“Yeah my ex had cyclic vomiting syndrome so bad, but he smoked weed to help him fight the nausea turns out it was making him worse off. Not a lot of people know about this one, where I’m from at least.”
“I started smoking regularly at night to assuage anxiety and kick start my appetite and eventually ended up developing this super fun condition. It’s absolutely awful. I thought I was pregnant and or dying.”
10. Dependency.
“Its not that its super addicting its just nothing is as fun as being high so you want to be high all the time.”
“As a pretty consistent weed smoker, I don’t like when people say that weed isn’t addicting. They’re right in saying that it’s not addictive chemically like nicotine or something, you can still get addicted to not being sober.”
“I’ve been a daily user for the last 15 (or more) years and my mind automatically starts to feel like I’m not relaxing if I haven’t smoked.”
11. A higher tolerance.
“The one most annoying thing with being a smoker is your tolerance level goes way up so even though you are smoking you arent getting that high you used to get, just a mind numbing insomnia almost.”
12. Triggering psychosis.
“It can trigger psychosis if you’re susceptible to it already.”
“I had a friend go through a mental break after smoking a lot. Had to be admitted and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (which ran in their family).”
“NPR did a report about a study done in the UK, saying that heavy pot smokers are 3x more likely to have a psychotic episode than people who never smoked at all.”
13. Brain development.
“There is “moderate evidence” that acute marijuana use can impair learning, memory, and attention, leading to a reasonable argument that it shouldn’t be consumed by those under about 25 since the brain is still developing during that time.”
14. Money.
“If you use it regularly it can become super expensive.”
15. Disassociation.
“Cannabis induced disassociation. Can completely ruin your life.”
“I’ve had it (I think it materialized from my generalized anxiety disorder) but it was the scariest fucking thing when it first happened. You feel like you’re in a fog, and disconnected from everything. Took about 8 months for me to shake it.”
